Reading the Signs with Robert Mirek

A truly generous article by Sarah Rose Sharp
March 20, 2016

Walking into Robert Mirek’s studio space on 9 mile, where he has been working for 15 years, is like walking into the offices of the anthropologist of a forgotten world. Atlantis, maybe — there is something very undersea/advanced civilization/alien language about the proliferation of art, reference materials, and found objects in his suspiciously tidy front room and workshop.

In finished form, these sometimes manifest as sculptural symbol sets in series, which have a hieroglyphic or linguistic feel — it came as no surprise to me to hear that Robert made a living for a long while as a graphic designer. The collections of symbols, with common materials but variations on shape, imply language and invite decryption (though Robert says they are not literal letters). And while computer-assisted design plays a big role in the design process, they are cut, routed, and finished entirely by hand, giving them a crafted feel that saves them from being clinical. His most recent body of work, Threads (pictured above), is bare wood, with surface details in multi-colored thread. These shapes suggest architectural models, accounting not only for buildings, but the spaces between them — parks or green spaces, in Robert’s mind — and the threads suggesting an overlay of city infrastructure, such as transportation lines or utilities. It’s an interesting way of incorporating architecture and design principles into work that is still firmly sculptural. These are a stripped down iteration of a previous symbol series, Strands, which began with wooden shapes, but finished with a layer of moldable, rough, pumice acrylic, the insets filled with broken safety glass in a matrix of eerie green epoxy resin. While Threads look like the product of an advanced future society, the crude and vaguely asymmetrical Strands look like an artifact of a very advanced fallen society of the past (or myth).

BTW … My favorite comment from the article: “He seems very nice for an insane person”.

Read the complete article and view more photos here >
http://sarahrosesharp.com/2016/03/20/3172016-reading-the-signs-with-robert-mirek/